Review: Philips Headband Headphones (SHK1030)

Written on Nov 20, 2008 by Brian and filed under News, Philips, Reviews

You’ve got the kid’s DVD player, portable game system, Tag Reader or some other kid’s tech for entertainment/education purposes. But what’s sometimes hard to find, especially for younger kids, is a good pair of headphones that’s also safe for their ears. These Philips kid’s headphones have a great design and interesting approach on the safety issue.

I admit it; I’m guilty of letting my son slap on adult headphones to watch Cars on our latest airplane trip. At the time, I didn’t fully think it through though. Honestly, I was just happy the headphones sort of fit. Blaring Cars on a portable DVD player speaker in the airplane isn’t the most respectful thing you can do for your aisle-mates.

This set of Philips headphones is the headband style, which works best with smaller heads. These actually adjust on their own in two areas to offer a proper fit and comfort for kids. Each side slides up and down on a non-locking track, which means they slide down to fit the head, rather than needing a locking mechanism to be adjusted. Each earphone has a hinge mechanism too, so it fits flush against the ear. The ear pads are foam and provide good comfort.

Like many adult headphones, these have a volume control embedded in the four foot cable. Here’s the particularly interesting part of these headphones. Aside from the volume slider which is nice to have, as kids often don’t fully understand the volume controls on their devices, there is a safety volume lock that can be accessed by parents.

Once you remove two screws, parents can set the maximum volume level in the volume control box. For younger kids, this is a safety setting that’s absolutely critical. It’s easier than parents sometimes realize for kids to be listening to music or games too loud. With this switch it’s easy to limit the maximum volume so even as kids work the volume slider there’s limited risk of hearing damage.

Kids aren’t exactly audiophiles, so we’re not going to spend a lot of time on audio quality in this review, other than to say we think they’re pretty reasonable. As headphones like this go, they’re a little light on bass, which we even hesitate to mention, but we do so only to reassure parents that the sounds quality is more than sufficient.

None of these features matter though if for whatever reason kids won’t wear the headphones. We found in our test audience that kids found them to be comfortable and for those who cared, stylish. They only come in blue currently though, so while they’re not necessarily boyish looking, girls might prefer the typical pink as a choice.

Bottom Line

For $12, it’s hard to come up with anything bad to say about these headphones, except they don’t come in pink. They do everything else they need to though, including being comfortable, flexible for varying head sizes and they add the protection of parent selected maximum volume controls.

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